EPFL and ETHZ unite to establish the “Swiss AI Initiative”
Tech
6 December 2023
This initiative aims to bring transparency and reliability to the forefront of AI development, leveraging the power of the new Alps supercomputer. | © EPFL / iStock
ETH Zurich and EPFL, two of Switzerland’s premier educational institutions, are combining their efforts to establish Switzerland as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) through the “Swiss AI Initiative.”
The Alps supercomputer, housed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) of ETH Zurich in Lugano, is set to become operational in spring 2024. With over 10,000 GPUs, it ranks among the world’s most powerful computers for AI applications. This cutting-edge infrastructure offers Swiss scientists computing capabilities on par with the world’s largest tech firms, giving Switzerland a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
ETH Vice President for Research, Christan Wolfrum, emphasizes the initiative’s role in ensuring Switzerland’s digital sovereignty and independent research. “We must lead in AI, rather than leaving it to a few multinational corporations,” he states, underscoring the importance of independent and forward-looking scientific contributions in AI.
A key focus of the Swiss AI Initiative is the development and training of new large language models (LLMs) that meet legal, ethical, and scientific standards. Jan Hesthaven, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at EPFL, highlights the initiative’s commitment to transparency and open-source principles, ensuring comprehensibility and accountability in AI development.
The Swiss AI Initiative plans to use an immense amount of computing power on the Alps computer to develop industry-specific AI models for various fields including robotics, medicine, and climate science. This project will also explore fundamental questions surrounding human-AI interaction, ethics, security, and data privacy.
The collaboration extends beyond ETH Zurich and EPFL, involving around a dozen Swiss universities and research institutes. Over 75 professors across Switzerland have joined the initiative, alongside international researchers, to work on multilingual, cross-border open-source LLMs. Both ETH Zurich and EPFL are also part of ELLIS, a European network of AI excellence, further enhancing their global AI research collaboration.
